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A fun jewelry DESIGN BLOG by your best friend jean yates. Writerer, columnist, designer, and person who makes typos.

Monday, October 31, 2016

review of Big Flies by by Keith Hirshland

What is a "perfect crime"?

You will have to read this book to find out!

review of Big Flies

by Keith Hirshland

The phrase "Big Flies" is a part of a quote from Honore de Balzac.

The full quote is on the cover of the book:"Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught."

It gives you a hint of the what the book will be about. Some of the most intriguing characters in the book are sort of like "big flies". Possibly they will be able to pass through those figurative spider webs in all sorts of fascinating ways.

Get ready, sit back, and enjoy this book, because the author really has a way with words as well as a fun and fascinating plot at hand.

In the prologue, four famous crimes are mentioned. They all actually happened and have never been solved. For example, one is the D.B. Cooper case which took place in 1971.

How the four famous crimes are linked is something else the reader will have a ball reading Big Flies to figure out. It is all theoretical, but it could have happened this way.

Opening in the present day, we meet the young protagonist, Leland, attempting to write his first novel. He is falling a bit flat. The reason he is trying to be a writer is because of his father. His father was supposed to be a well-known travel and food critic (and was famous for this), however Leland has made a discovery. His dad Chester actually used all sorts of magazines like "National Geographic", "Look", and "Life" to make up his reviews. Leland figures if his father was so clever at writing, perhaps he should give it a shot, too.

The mystery then goes back into the past. Chapter two brings the reader face to face with Leland's father, Chester, at age eight. He is celebrating his birthday and coming to the realization that a book he has been given, a Hardy Boys mystery, is just the ticket to understanding what he will be interested in becoming when he grows up.

Big Flies goes back and forth between Leland, and his father Chester, going from the present to the past, and back. Each chapter is titled "These Days" or "Those Days" for clarity.

If you love action and surprises, you will get your fill here.

If you enjoy things on the humorous and witty side, this book will fit the bill that way as well.

The story presents solutions to four cold cases: the D.B. Cooper case, the theft of the priceless gold and emerald Tucker Cross which had been brought up from a sunken ship off of Bermuda, the famous Chicago First National Bank Robbery, and the missing obsidian monkey which was stolen from Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology.

Don't expect to be able to figure Big Flies out. Just enjoy Big Flies, right up until the delightful ending, when all will have been explained.

Big Flies has plenty of great characters (both past and present), good buddies to enjoy you'll want to be pals with too, a bit of mystifying romance, and some vivid and marvelous scenes (especially if you love early Vegas, before Frank Sinatra was banned from his own casino).There will be mystery stacked upon mystery, some cool 8 track tapes with great choices in music thrown in, and fantastic, detailed twists.

And if you like dogs, Leland's Bernese Mountain dog, "Harriet Potter", will make you feel cozy if you happen to be reading this on one of those rainy, cold nights people are always writing about.